Supplement makers are required under good manufacturing practices regulations to qualify their ingredient suppliers, but official guidelines for how have not been released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. An industry group, however, has taken the important step of doing so.

The Standardized Information on Dietary Supplement Ingredients (SIDI) Working Group has issued the Certificate of Analysis (CoA) for Dietary Supplement Components: A Voluntary Guideline to help manufacturers qualify their suppliers by explaining what kind of information should appear on a CoA. Templates for developing CoAs are also available for botanical and non-botanical ingredients.

The SIDI Working Group is comprised of the American Herbal Products Association, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the Natural Products Association and the United Natural Products Alliance. The team’s Certificate of Analysis (CoA) Guideline, which is part of a series of voluntary guidelines for ingredient supplier qualification, appears on each of the groups’ Web sites (such as www.ahpa.org/SIDI/index.html).

“It’s essential for ingredient suppliers to have a form that can be consistently used, containing the appropriate information in a clear and concise format. By standardizing the information on CoAs, this voluntary guideline will benefit both ingredient suppliers and dietary supplement manufacturers,” said Andrew Shao, Ph.D., a spokesperson for the SIDI Working Group and CRN’s senior vice president, scientific & regulatory affairs.

 

Published in WholeFoods Magazine, August 2010 (published ahead of print on June 29, 2010)